Hong Kong is luring tourists back to its shores as the pandemic fades by giving free airline tickets. Once the city-final state’s coronavirus restrictions are lifted, the Hong Kong tourism board intends to give away 500,000 airline tickets worth the equivalent of HK$2 billion ($254.8 million).
“Once the government announces it will remove all COVID-19 restrictions for inbound travellers, we’ll roll out the advertising campaigns for the free air tickets,” Dane Cheng, executive director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, told the BBC.
The Hong Kong government imposed stringent travel regulations in response to the coronavirus pandemic. One of them was a two-week hotel quarantine for anyone entering the city-state.
When the requirements were particularly onerous for the crew, Cathay Pacific started paying pilots cash bonuses to fly into the city-state and between mainland China.
The restrictions were loosened in September, but the city-state has seen a sharp decline in tourists.
The most recent statistics provided by the tourism board show that between January and August 2022, just over 183,600 people travelled to Hong Kong. Even though that is a significant increase over the previous year, the BBC reports that it is still far below the pre-pandemic figures of 56 million in 2019.
A spokesperson for the Hong Kong Tourism Board told Insider that the distribution of the tickets will be handled by the Hong Kong Airport Authority.
Which airlines might be assigned to receive tickets is unknown. According to the BBC, the tickets were bought during the pandemic to aid airlines and will be given out in 2023.
Insider contacted the Hong Kong Airports Authority for additional comment, but they did not respond right away.
The announcement follows news on Wednesday that Virgin Atlantic is ending its operations to and from the city-state because of operational challenges caused by the war in Ukraine.
The closure of Russian airspace had added nearly two hours onto the flight from Hong Kong to London’s Heathrow Airport, the airline said.
